Today's Safety Tip: It can be dangerous to collect beetles in Scarsdale

[Neal Evenhuis]

Keep this in mind when going out to collect in a well-to-do
neighborhood ... and don't hold necessarily your breath for justice
in a Scarsdale court of law.

I guess the irony here is that he moved from Queen's to Scarsdale
because the collecting was "better"...

Lawyer Loses Suit Against Scarsdale Police
Tom Perrotta
New York Law Journal
04-08-2005
A Debevoise & Plimpton attorney who was apprehended at gunpoint while
collecting beetles near his Scarsdale
home has lost an initial appeal in his civil rights suit against the
Village of Scarsdale and its police department.
Southern District Judge Charles L. Brieant ruled that a jury had
reasonably concluded that officers did not use
excessive force when they pointed guns at the attorney, Harry Zirlin,
and handcuffed him behind his back with his
face to the ground.
The officers were responding to a woman who said she saw a man in the
woods carrying a knife.
"A reasonable jury could conclude, based upon the totality of the
knowledge of the police at the time of their
momentary and sudden encounter with the plaintiff, including
information that an altercation involving threats of
violence had occurred recently at the nearby Sanitation Department,
led them to believe, reasonably, that they
were entering a potentially hostile and dangerous situation," Judge
Brieant wrote in Zirlin v. The Village of
Scarsdale, 03 Civ. 9903. "They were unaware of Mr. Zirlin's identity
or intentions."

The decision will be published Wednesday.
Mr. Zirlin, in fact, has two identities: associate at one of the
city's leading law firms and recognized expert and
collector of beetles. He has lectured and written widely on the
subject, including co-authorship of the "National
Audubon Society Field Guide to the Mid-Atlantic States."
In December 2002, Mr. Zirlin, then 51, walked five minutes from his
home to a wooded area near the Heathcote
Bypass. There, he used his pocketknife to extract beetle specimens
from dead wood. The knife, he said in an
interview, "could not cut a loaf of bread."
A woman driving along the road saw Mr. Zirlin and stopped to tell a
sanitation worker at a nearby transfer station
about a man with a knife in the woods. The worker informed the police.
Officers never identified the woman and she has never given her
version of the events. Mr. Zirlin's theory is that
the woman thought he was a danger to himself.
"She did a drive-by psychiatric diagnosis," he said. "It was around
Christmas time and she sees someone alone in
the woods with a knife and thinks, 'He is going to commit suicide.'"
Once the officers arrived, they asked Mr. Zirlin to walk toward them.
Two officers pointed their guns at him. Mr.
Zirlin was told to drop his bag, move closer, turn around and drop to
the ground. The officers then handcuffed him.
Lying face down and handcuffed, Mr. Zirlin explained that he lived
nearby and was collecting beetles. He gave his
name and address. He said an officer searched his bag, which held his
knife and glass jars of beetles. He was soon
released.
After months of letters and discussions with local officials, Mr.
Zirlin sued. The suit, he has always maintained, is
not about money, but a way to force the Scarsdale police to change
tactics that he said are dangerous and could
result in the death of an innocent person.

"This is a gunpoint stop," Mr. Zirlin said. "I was afraid to move my
eyes, that's how petrified I was. If they had done
every single thing they did to me except point the guns at me, I
would not have sued them. I would have written a
nasty letter, but I would not have spent $30,000 in legal fees."
He added: "These things don't normally happen to 50-year-old
attorneys, but they do happen to kids who wear
baggy sweatshirts and baggy pants." Mr. Zirlin said his 14-year-old
son is one of those kids.
Judge Brieant described Mr. Zirlin as the "paradigm of a reputable
citizen." Nonetheless, he said, there was no
reason to upset a jury verdict in favor of the town.
The judge cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision from last month,
Muehler v. Mena, 2005 LEXIS 2755, to bolster his
decision. In Muehler, an eight-officer SWAT team entered a home that,
it turned out, was inhabited only by a 5-
foot-2-inch woman who was asleep. The Court said it was acceptable
for the officers to immediately handcuff the
woman without determining whether she was dangerous. It said
overwhelming force was justified when police
needed to gain control of what they believed was a dangerous situation.
Mr. Zirlin said the Muehler case was not comparable, since those
officers were executing a search warrant. He said
he would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Mr. Zirlin was represented by Bruce Menken of Beranbaum Menken
Ben-Asher & Bierman. Howard Code of the Law
Office of Patrick Colligan argued on behalf of the defendants. He
could not be reached for comment.